


Broken Chains

by Flutiebear



Series: Free As We'll Ever Be [5]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: AU, Angst, Angst and Humor, Blow Jobs, Comfort Sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-04
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flutiebear/pseuds/Flutiebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The chains may be broken, but that doesn't make you free. Yet.</p><p>Post-game AU. Anders X Garrett Hawke, Carver X Merrill, a few more surprise characters on the way. Takes place in the "Free As We'll Ever Be" universe; prequel to "Free As We'll Ever Be", "Anonymous" and "Time and a Place".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Ring Remains

It had been two weeks since the Gallows, and Garrett still hadn’t spoken to Anders. 

They still shared quarters, of course, and after everyone else had gone to sleep, they made hard, violent love as the ship swayed beneath them – old habits died hard, Anders supposed, and nothing fueled passion quite like tense, furrowed brows and clenched jaws. But the words that had once passed so easily between them were now gone, vanished into the sea spray like so much smoke. It was a sacrifice Anders had never expected to make--but then again, many things had happened in the past fortnight that Anders had not expected.

Garrett had once helped him write sixty-seven drafts of a manifesto no one read. He had once sung Anders songs about lusty milkmaids and harvest moons, and recited a twelve-stanza poem about the scar on Anders’s left knee that he’d made up on the spot.

That voice had been his salvation, his comfort, his candle in the dark, the one lifeline left after he’d cut all others. And now it was gone.

Garrett had once asked him his real name.

Now he couldn’t even bear to speak it. 

The _Siren’s Regret_ was still two days from Hercinia, when Anders could bear it no longer.

After Fenris and Isabela had retired for the night and Merrill had taken Carver and Dog above deck to stargaze, Anders approached Garrett in their shared quarters, as tentative as a stray cat to a bowl of milk.

Garrett was stretched out along the hempen hammock, all limbs and wiry hair and sunburned skin he’d refused to let Anders heal. With one hand, he toyed with a small metal ring, like the kind they used to find in Darktown rubble, Garrett using his force magic to buoy the trinket in the air like a feather.

He showed no sign he’d heard Anders come in or shut the door, just continued to scowl ever so slightly at the glinting ring bobbing and slamming and bobbing and slamming against his palm. 

“Garrett,” he said, drawing out the vowels like blood from a wound. 

Anders waited. But the man did not answer, just continued flicking the ring. 

Anders almost turned away then, a small voice inside him begging to run out of the room and sleep on the prow with the sharks and the gulls. But he held his ground.

“When I asked if you wanted to be fugitives together,” he said at last, “this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

Garrett huffed instead of answering. The next time the ring smacked against his hand, he caught and held onto it.

“The silent treatment I could deal with,” Anders continued, every sentence bringing him a step further into the room. “But it’s Dog. He so misses your singing. He howls all night for it. In fact, so does Carver.” He withdrew a hand slowly, very slowly, from his pocket, encouraged by Garrett’s stillness. “Which is a pity, really. You’d think a Templar would be able to offer up a dirty jig or two. Amazing the holes in his training. I’d chalk it up to his late start, I suppose.”

A small muscle in Garrett’s jaw pulsed dangerously.

Anders sighed.

“Please, love.” He could hear the whine in his voice, but didn’t care. “Just say something. Anything. Both of you not speaking to me is torture.”

Garrett’s eyes narrowed and flicked over to Anders at last.

“Both?” His voice was raw, hoarse.

“Justice,” and Garrett looked away again, the line between his brows deepening into a canyon. “Before, I could feel him scrabbling against my skull, desperate to get out. But now I can’t feel him at all. It’s like he’s asleep.”

“Sulking,” Garrett sniffed.

“Retreating.” Anders continued to inch slowly toward the hammock, careful not to make any sudden moves. “I think he knows what happened, what he—what _we’ve_ done. And he’s scared of it.”

“Good.” Garrett crossed his arms, his hands still balled into fists, candlelight casting soft shadows on knuckles and bones. “Demons don’t get scared.”

“But men do.” Anders was barely a hand’s breadth from the hammock. He could reach out and touch his lover if he so dared, but instead he simply stared at Garrett, who in turn stared at nothing at all. “Please, Garrett. Talk to me.”

“What do you want me to say? That I forgive you?”

“No. Yes. Well, maybe, if it’s true.” Anders ran a through his hair; he’d snapped his hair tie during the fight with Meredith, and he hadn’t yet found another one, thus leaving the greasy, unkempt strands to fall free along his neck and jaw.  “But it isn’t.”

Garrett sighed. “If you had just _told_ me.”

“You would have tried to stop me.”

Garrett’s eyes snapped back to his. “You don’t know that.”

It was Anders’s turn to sigh. “Of course you would. That’s the kind of person you are.”

“No, it isn’t,” Garrett said, an edge settling into his voice, whose bite Anders had never heard before, or maybe he’d just never noticed.  “You read too many of Varric’s serials.” He sat up, the hammock swaying gently under his shift. “You put me on this pedestal, Anders. You turn me into a Dockside statue. Into _Hawke.”_ He spat the name like a curse. “But I am just a man, just like you – and when Meredith held you in that magic, dangling there like a puppet—“ Garrett’s voice broke, and he dragged a hand across his face, tugging at his scraggled, overgrown beard. When he looked up at Anders, his eyes were like caverns. “I would have drowned Thedas in blood myself just to keep you safe.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but Garrett raised a hand. “You wanted me to talk. I’m talking.”

Anders nodded. 

“I hate you,” Garrett said.

Suddenly Anders forgot how to breathe.

But then Garrett squeezed his eyes shut and shoved the heels of his palms against them. “No, that’s a lie,” he half-sobbed. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. I would follow you to the ends of Thedas, start a thousand revolutions, if only you would let me. You have to let me, Anders.”

Anders swallowed hard, forcing the words past the thickness in his throat. “I only wanted to protect you—“

“Bugger your protection.” Garrett slammed his fists down on his knees. “This isn’t an either or, Anders. You think you have to choose, but you don’t. You and I, us—“ Garrett’s hand flailed back and forth between them, “we _are_ the cause. This, between us, _this_ is what we’re fighting for. Let me fight with you. Please.”

“But in the Gallows, I asked--”

“I know what you asked. You asked me to _run_ with you.” Garrett huffed again, a broken, bitter puff of air through clenched teeth. ”But I know. You can’t run forever. He won’t let you. _You_ won’t let you. And I don’t want to run. I want to _fight._ ”

Garrett lurched out of the hammock and hurled himself at Anders, who, despite his disbelief, threaded shaking hands through the hair at Garrett’s nape.

“Maker’s cock, Anders,” he murmured, the sound muffled by graying feathers and greasy hair. “ _’Til the day we die._ You promised me, you asshole.”

 “I can’t stand to lose you,” Anders whispered against Garrett’s neck. “They can use that against me. Against you.”

“Oh, you fucking _martyr,_ ” Garrett said. He pulled back just far enough to take Anders’s cheeks in his hands. “You’re free now. Both of us. No more chains.” His thumb swiped along Anders’s fledgling beard and his lips curled upward in the ghost of a smile. “We fight them on our ground, not theirs. They can’t use anything we don’t give them. And Anders—Maker, Anders, _you’re my family_ ,” he said, emotion punctuating every word, every syllable. “You and Carver, you’re all I have left. Don’t take that away from me. You can’t take that away from me.”

Anders felt the last of his resolve evaporate like smoke, like ash.

Like silence.

“I won’t,” he said, bringing his lips to Garrett’s at last. “I won’t. I promise.”


	2. Untangling the Skein

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ocean calls. Also: smut.

Nearly a week later, the _Siren’s Regret_ dropped anchor in Hercinia, her arrival delayed by the sudden appearance in port of a merchantman flying Val Royeaux colors. Isabela assured them that Kirkwall to Val Royeaux and back, plus the extra needed to reach “the boondock Marches”, was at least a month’s sea voyage, more if you factored in delays to safely traverse the shoals around Brandel’s Reach. But mere logic couldn’t stop Carver from oiling his claymore and glaring at the horizon, refusing to even check the spyglass until the galleon had raised its sail again.

“It’s a spice vessel, sweet thing,” Isabela said. “I don’t think they’ve got Templars aboard, unless they’re stuffed in the water barrels.”

Carver scowled and continued swiping his sword. “Not that I think the Divine knows where we are,” he said, testing the blade’s heft. “But I don’t want anybody else to know either.”

“We have to drop anchor sometime. Unless you think Merrill could summon us a demon to eat.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Or maybe just some rum.” 

The tips of his ears turned pink as Merrill looked up from a tangled skein of rope, which she’d been using to practice the basic soldier’s knots Carver had taught her.

“I don’t think that would be wise, Isabela,” she chirped. “Fade spirits would taste rather terrible, I should think, like raw lyrium. And then we might all go mad like Varric’s brother.”

At the helm, Fenris chuckled. “But at least then we would be drunk.” He doffed the jaunty tricorner that he’d donned to protect his eyes from sun glare off the waves. “Isn’t that the pirate’s life you promised me, Captain?” 

“There’s a lot more to being a pirate than inebriation,” Isabela huffed. “Like glistening, for starters. And tan barrel chests. Sailor, why _are_ you still wearing your shirt”

“I burn easily,” Fenris said with a smirk that could start fires. “Tender skin.”

“I bet,” she replied, licking her lips a little. “I have some oils to prevent that, you know.”

“Ugh. Get a room, you two,” Carver muttered.

Isabela smiled patiently. “There’s always room for one more,” she purred.

Carver fumbled with his oil cloth. His cheeks burned, ruddy and splotched. “No, thank you.”

“I was talking to the girl with the rum,” she countered.

Garrett and Anders quietly stood apart from the rest, leaning against the rigging, their fingers interlaced. Since that night in their quarters, the tension between them seemed to have eased, but Anders couldn’t help but notice the way Garrett’s jaw still pulsed, how sometimes he would stare at the ocean for minutes at a time, as if the waves were just another fireplace. 

“She’s right, you know,” Garrett said at last. Right now he fixed his unblinking gaze on Dog, who panted up on the prow like a figurehead come to life. “We do need to enter port eventually, if only to get my brother some shore leave before he explodes all over Merrill’s toes.”

Anders lightly traced the veins in Garrett’s hand with his free fingertips. “I agree with Carver,” he said simply.

Garrett snorted. “That’s a first.”

“The less we’re on shore, the better,” he muttered. “Templars don’t have boats, and tin suits make terrible swimmers.”

“Anders, I’m as paranoid as the next apostate, but the Templars can’t know we’re here yet.” Garrett nudged his shoulder against Anders’s. “The longer we circle this port like vultures, however, the sooner they’ll figure it out.”

“They know we took ship,” he said. “There are only so many ports we could go.”

“Then they’ll assume we went to Amaranthine to go beg sanctuary from your old commander.” Anders grunted and rubbed a small mole on the side of Garrett’s thumb. If that were they case, then they didn’t know Amell like he knew her: a woman of ice and steel and no second (or third, or fourth) chances.

“Or Alamar. Plenty of shadowy alleyways and sewers we could get lost in there.” Garrett shrugged. “Think like _they_ would, Anders. Hercinia has no Circle, no Underground to speak of. All they have is fish and Templars. In their minds, why would you even bother coming here?”

Anders did not answer, did not look at him when Garrett pushed off the rigging and turned to face him—just held a little tighter to the fleshy part of Garrett’s thumb and palm.

“The Templars here don’t even know what we look like,” Garrett continued. “And if we hide the staves and you keep from glowing, everyone will just think we’re fishermen. Smelly, blood-spattered fishermen.”

When Anders still didn’t respond, Garrett brought a hand to Anders’s chin and stroked the coarse hairs there; his beard had grown so thickly it was beginning to curl in on itself, like a pinecone. “Anders. We won’t stay long. We’ll be safe. Really.”

“We’re in no position for a fight,” he muttered, barely moving his mouth.

“No fighting, I promise,” Garrett said, his lips quirking briefly upward. “Even though I’m good at it.”

“You really are,” Anders admitted.

“One night. Then we can haul anchor and sail off to Qundalon for all I care.”

“Fine,” said Anders, nudging his boot against the instep of Garrett’s. “But if a Templar so much as pisses near us, I reserve the right to glow all I want.”

Garrett kissed Anders’s fist. “Then I’ll tell Carver to use the ladies’.”

***

That night, they finally docked, and Anders even allowed himself to be dragged to a local tavern for a warm bed and a hot meal, albeit only after Carver had shouted and cursed and generally torn a hole in the Veil about the stupidity of letting down their collective guard. In the end, though, he acquiesced, when Merrill caught his elbow and began cooing like a pidgeon about the prospect of acquiring true tavern slop; and in his haste to debark, Carver even left his sunshield and plate on board.

Hercinia’s one dockside tavern was, by outward appearances, less of a building and more of an overgrown lean-to, creaking in the gentlest of ocean breezes and listing dangerously against its neighboring warehouses. But light gleamed invitingly through the dirty windows, and in the cool air Anders could pick out muted laughter and song, and the heavy scent of fried food.

“’The Foaming Head’?” Merrill read off the clapboard out front. “That sounds like something out of Varric’s stories.”

“Or one of mine,” Isabela added.

When they opened the door, a put-upon elf girl with a smile like pickle brine greeted them almost immediately. She cast a disapproving glance at their blood-stained tunics and steered them to a table in the back, away from the door and the fire. But Anders found it difficult to mind overly much; in fact, as they sipped from heavy flagons and waited for their fish pies, he had a hard time remembering why he’d ever thought coming ashore had been a bad idea at all -- even if the ale tasted as if it had once been used to unsuccessfully scrub the floor.

“Admit it, brother,” Carver said, sipping from his flagon and awkwardly stretching an arm along the back of Merrill’s chair. “You’ll miss Kirkwall.”

“Oh, of course,” said Garrett, rolling his eyes. “What’s not to miss? The rats, the thugs, the having to watch my step all the time. It was a veritable paradise.” 

“You should have lived in Darktown,” Anders added. ”The sewers came alive at night, with the cries of the starving and the shanked.”

“There too?” Merrill murmured. “I thought that was just in the alienage.”

“Kirkwall was our home for seven years.” Carver glared at Anders. “It’s where Mother’s buried. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“Graveyards don’t make a home.” Garrett leaned over his mug, peering distrustfully at the ale within. “Besides, we already _had_ a home.”

“I bet the darkspawn sing songs about shanking too,” said Carver.

“So this _is_ a fascinating discussion, and I hate to disrupt it,” she said with a forced smile that suggested quite the opposite, “But we should talk about where you’ve decided to head next.”

“Ansburg,” Carver said immediately. “The Wardens have a keep there. We might be able to get them on our side. They owe us one, after what Father did for them.”

“Wardens don’t really understand the concept of _fairness_ ,” Anders began.

But Merrill nodded. “I think Carver’s right. If we pass by the Green Dales, we might be able to find the Alerion clan. Before we left, Nia told me they’d been spotted that far east.” She dropped her eyes.

“And who are the Alerions?” Fenris sighed heavily, as if she had suddenly begun dissecting a frog on the table. 

“My old clan,” she said softly. “They might be willing to help us if we—if I ask.” 

Carver leaned forward and opened his mouth to say something to her, but Fenris spoke first. “Unwise. That would take you perilously close to Starkhaven. You should head north instead. To—“

“Antiva City,” Isabela finished with a nod. Anders wondered if they’d practiced this. “You can hide out there for awhile, build up a mercenary army of the best rogues and assassins and street whores.”

“There’s even a Circle too for you to ‘liberate’,” Fenris added, biting off the last word.

“’You’?” Garrett said suddenly. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

Isabela and Fenris shared a heavy look, one filled with unspoken agreements. They had _definitely_ practiced this, Anders though.

“That depends, Hawke,” Fenris said slowly. “Do you need us?”

“Yes, of course,” Garrett sputtered. “We could always use another blade. And what would we do without someone to set off the traps she should be disarming?” he said, nodding to Isabela.

“That was one time, you ass,” she muttered under her breath. Garrett smirked at her.

“No, Hawke,” Fenris said firmly. “Not what you could use. What you _need_.” He drew in a deep breath, and it was then that Anders noticed Fenris had finally removed the red favor from his arm. ”Do you _need_ us? Do you need me? For if you require it, I will be there.”

“I think what Fenris may be trying to say,” interjected Isabela, dragging her eyes from the elf to Garrett and back again, “is that you don’t really need him. Or either of us, really. You want us there. But want and need aren’t the same thing, kitten. And I’ve been away from the open water long enough. Fenris has, too.”

“Fenris isn’t a sailor,” Garrett said in a strangled voice. 

“He is now,” she said, not ungently. 

“Is that your professional opinion?” Garrett spat.

“Garrett,” Anders murmured.

“No, Anders,” he said bitterly. “I want to hear their excuses.”

“I owe you, Hawke,” Fenris said, his brow furrowing. “I will always owe you for what you have done. But I cannot—will not–be party to another massacre. ”

Carver’s fingernails scraped against his clay tankard, and Merrill laid a steadying hand on his shoulder. She seemed about to say something – but at that moment, the waitress reappeared with their fish pies.

Garrett waited until they were all served before speaking again. “Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “We don’t _need_ you. Either of you. Go be pirates.” He tucked in, his fork scraping loudly against the bottom of his pewter plate. “And be sure to drink lots of rum. For me.”

***

Anders woke in the middle of the night with Garrett’s mouth around his cock—warm and wet, working him to fullness. Garrett’s lips were urgent and needful, and his fingers left half-moon shapes in the crevices of Anders’s hips and knees.

In the darkness under the scratchy blanket Garrett’s head bobbed like a trick of shadows, and Anders was reminded of all the times he lay awake on the cot in his clinic, pretending his hand under his blanket was Garrett doing just this. But here and now—this felt like the actual fantasy, like a dream already slipping away at morning’s first light.

By the time Anders reached full consciousness, he was almost there, and it took only a few hard sucks to send him gasping, plummeting over the precipice-- bright light and blood in his ears and glorious, powerful release.

Garrett swallowed all of it and came messily in his hand a few seconds later.

After they’d cleaned off, Garrett lay on Anders’s chest, sweaty and flushed. Against his belly, Anders could feel Garrett’s heartbeat, still thrumming as rapidly as it had a few minutes prior.

“That was nice,” he murmured, already half-asleep again.

Garrett didn’t speak, just traced whorls into Anders’s chest hair where none actually existed. Anders had always loved Garrett’s chest hair, thick and soft, although he so rarely let Anders rest his head on it in post-coital bliss, the Fereldan always insisting on spreading over him like a warm blanket.

“I’m sorry,” Garrett murmured.

“For what? For _that?_ ” Anders chuckled muzzily. “You can make that mistake any time you like, love.”

Garrett merely hmmed. His fingertip lazily traced the old wound over Anders’s heart, a flower of scar tissue shaped somewhat like a Chantry sun. Limp and sated, Anders felt himself being lulled back to the Fade.

“Do you remember what he said?” Garrett said, his voice sounding far away. “I think about it sometimes.”

“What who said?”

“The strongest force.”

Anders was suddenly wide awake.

“Don’t, Garrett.” He pulled him closer. “It won’t help.”

Garrett’s hand stopped moving.

“It’s bullshit, anyway. First Varric and Aveline. Now them.”

“Sacrifices must be made, love—“

“Don’t you talk to me about sacrifices.” Garrett’s hand clenched into a fist that rested over the sun-shaped scar. “Don’t you _dare_ call them sacrifices, Anders.”

“No, love,” he said in what he hoped was a tender tone, or at least tender enough to hide his frustration. “I meant _you._ ”

Anders took Garrett’s cheek in hand and forced his eyes upward, forced Garrett to look in his eyes and _see,_ and not just find another fireplace to crawl into.

“You can’t make people do what you want,” Anders whispered, holding those honey eyes steady with his own. “They’re going to go where they want. You should know that better than anyone.” Anders kissed his forehead. “You have to let them go where they will.”

“What do you care?” Garrett grunted. “You never liked Fenris anyway.”

He shrugged. “I like Isabela well enough.”

“They should stay here with us.”

“Maybe so,” he said, his lips still against Garrett’s forehead. This close up, Anders could see a few new strands of gray interlacing the hair at the back of Garrett’s neck, and he brought up a hand to cover them. “But that’s their choice to make. Not yours.” 

Garrett sighed, long and from deep within his belly, and rested his cheek heavily against Anders’s chest.  “What was the point if everyone was just going to leave in the end?” he said at last.

Anders didn’t know how to tell him that that _was_ the point; that it had always been the point – that what was true for mages was true for pirates, and would-be pirates too. That the choice to stay or go, to do as one wished, that was the only thing that had ever mattered; that the only way you knew something was worth having is if you had the choice to leave it. 

But he didn’t know how to say that, not yet; not without Garrett’s help. The best parts of his manifestos, after all, had always been the parts Garrett had scribbled in the margins.

He tried anyway. “Their leaving doesn’t mean they don’t love you.  It just means they’re free.“

“Don’t, Anders. Not tonight.” Garrett sighed. “I’m not in the mood.” 

So Anders held him in silence until he fell asleep. And when he woke in the middle of the night, he found Garrett had rolled away from him, to the far corner of the bed, curled in on himself into a tight, coiled ball.


	3. Restless in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brothers know how to hurt each other best.

Anders had the decency to pretend to be surprised when morning broke and neither _The Siren’s Regret_ nor her small crew were anywhere to be found. He always suspected Fenris and Isabela would leave without saying goodbye—long ago he’d learned that farewells were an invitation, a temptation of fate, and besides, the missing red favor on Fenris’s arm had already offered all the farewells that had ever been needed.

Still, for Garrett’s sake, he mustered up his best scowl and some rather convincing righteous indignation, and even though he wasn’t sure his love had bought his performance, it was clear he appreciated the effort. On the other hand, when Dog discovered their equipment piled on the floor by Carver’s bed, Anders’s sigh of relief was entirely genuine.

On top of the jumble were generously fat purses and satchels of rations, as well as their three staves (bundled with a note that read, “Sell these already, you daft kittens”)—but for some reason, Carver’s armor had never made it off the boat.

“I can’t believe they forgot _my_ gear.” He kicked the bed post. “Not even my sunshield!”

“Glad you have your priorities straight,” Garrett muttered.

“It’s for the best, Carver,” Merrill said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “All that clanking and creaking would attract too much attention. And when you shine in the sun it makes my eyes hurt.”  

But Carver, with his eyes fixed on Garrett, didn’t appear to notice she’d spoken, even though his hand twitched reflexively at her touch.

“Speak up, brother,” he said, pronouncing every consonant.

Garrett scowled. “Our ship is gone, and all you can do is whine about your armor.”

“Oh, look. I’ve said the wrong thing again.” Carver threw up his hands. “What a surprise.”

Garrett let loose a particularly petulant and dramatic sigh.

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, brother. You can get a new set. Here,” he said, force-pushing a purse into Carver’s chest with an audible thump. “Use some of Isabela’s bribe money.”

“Sure, I’ll just hop down to the fish guttery and buy some scales,” Carver said, his cheeks flushing a bright, splotchy red. “Or perhaps I should go to the Chantry, see if I can get some pauldrons on loaner—before your boyfriend blows up that one too.”

Garrett narrowed his eyes.

“Carver, please,” Merrill started, but he again showed no sign he’d heard her.

“Maybe you didn’t realize this, oh fearless leader.” He squared his shoulders and stared down his brother like a charging wyvern. “But my blade won’t be much protection if I can’t even protect myself.”

Garrett shrugged in a manner too practiced to be casual.

“Nobody asked you to come, Carver,” he said.

Carver looked as if he’d been punched in the face.

“Nobody asked _you_ to start a revolution,” he spat. _“Gare-bear.”_

“Come now, that’s not fair. What am I, chopped fish pie?” Anders flashed a grin, but it was no use; the two of them had already set their jaws and clenched their fists, and they shrugged off his words as easily as horses did flies.

“Is that what this is about?” Garrett took a step toward Carver, who held his ground. “Poor little Carver, once again caught in big brother’s shadow. Oh, why won’t anyone see that he needs his own revolution to start?”

“Everything always has to be about you, doesn’t it?” Carver narrowed his eyes. He gestured toward Anders. “It’s amazing the demon in his head puts up with it.”

“Leave him out of this.” Garrett took another step forward. He was inches from Carver’s nose.

“His cause only ever had room for one martyr, brother,” Carver said through gritted teeth. “And you weren’t it.”

Garrett’s jaw pulsed. “You watch what you say.”

“Or what? You’ll hit me? Go ahead.” Carver threw his arms open wide.

Garrett didn’t move.

“Thought so.” Carver smirked coldly. ”You know, I don’t get you, Garrett. You throw a temper tantrum over two pirates who just want to go back to drinking and fucking and whatever else pirates do. But when your own brother wants to help, you push him away like he’s darkspawn.” Carver jabbed his finger at his brother’s chest. “Whether you like it or not, I’m here, and I _will_ be useful.”

" _Fenris isn't a pirate,"_ Garrett seethed, glaring at his brother.

“He’s not family, either,” Carver said, holding the stare.

Suddenly Merrill was between them.

“Stop it, you two,” she said in a low, authoritative voice that Anders had only heard her use before on stray kittens. She placed a hand on Garrett’s chest, which made Carver’s scowl deepen further. “This won’t help anything.”

Something in the set of Merrill’s shoulders reminded Anders of Wynne and Leandra, and at her touch, Garrett visibly sagged. When he spoke again, his voice sounded deflated and old.

“Carver,” he began.

“Stuff it,” Carver said, eyes still on Merrill’s hand. He spun on his heels and headed out the door. “I have some fish scales to buy.”

Merrill sighed and shot Garrett a withering look.

“What?” he said, folding his arms over his chest.

“Sometimes I forget which of you is the elder brother,” she said, her mouth pinching into a tight line as she picked up the bundle of staves. “I suppose I might as well try to sell these while I’m at it,” she said, not sparing a glance behind her as she walked out of the room.

When the door closed, Garrett sighed and dropped his arms.

“Brothers,” he mumbled.

Anders sighed. He put a hand on Garrett’s shoulder. 

“It’s not that I don’t want him here,” Garrett continued softly.

“I know, love,” Anders said, even he wasn’t sure he did anymore.

***

In the end it was Carver’s suggestion of Ansburg that won out, because Merrill made two against zero, and Garrett spent the rest of the day acting equal parts repentant and petulant. For Anders’s part, he had never planned for _tomorrows_ and _what nexts_ and _we will be fugitives together_ , and Ansburg seemed as good a place as any to foment revolution, or at least as dangerous—and perhaps those were one and the same.

To Anders, Ansburg was little more than a summary in an atlas, a dot on old maps he’d held a lifetime ago. The Wardens and Circle of Magi both kept outposts there, he remembered, built as bulwarks against the creatures stalking the Weyrs. Once the breeding grounds of the now-extinct swamp dragons, the Weyrs were a vast network of bogs and mangrove forests, interlaced with sinkholes that, here and there, punched into the Deep Roads threading just below the surface. But centuries of dragon hunts in the Weyrs had stretched the Veil to tearing, and even in Kirkwall, Anders had heard the rumors of Fade-twisted nightmares and darkspawn now freely roaming the shadowed bogs.

Yet Anders had heard other rumors too, whispers that the Mage Underground still thrived amidst the swampy warrens. When the Starkhaven Circle fell so many years ago, many who hadn’t run toward Kirkwall had fled toward the Weyrs, and according to Anders’s sources, those mages had never been found – and, encouragingly (or discouragingly, if Anders were feeling grim about it), neither had their corpses.

If the Weyrs could hide and protect apostates, if the peat moss and dragon bones had somehow provided safe passage, then surely Ansburg couldn’t be all that bad.

Or so Anders thought—until the nightmares returned. 

Anders hadn’t dreamed of the Blackmarsh in years, a luxury he’d attributed to Justice’s influence; one of the few gifts his passenger had offered him that hadn’t somehow turned sour. Fade spirits who avoided their worst memories tended to make it difficult for their hosts to broach the subject as well.

But as they waded into the sodden and nameless lower Marches, barely a day past the upper Vimmarks, Anders began to dream of it again.

At first, it only came to him in sounds: the whine of mosquitos; yelping wolves; a cruel, crisp Orlesian accent; the ethereal screams of the damned. Then came the more concrete feelings: The heavy thud of a boot on a gate; the weight of sword slicing through flesh; rain upon dry, peeling skin; desecration; terror; longing; homesickness; loss.

By the time they’d plodded deep into the nameless wetlands, Anders had begun to see flashes of impossibly green eyes and raven black hair, of mauve Tevinter robes and twisted demon flesh; and always the shower of blood, always the same: the same splatter, the same pattern, the bright constellation of blood droplets against the night sky, red against black against light; a desecration he could do nothing to stop. And always too the pain, so overwhelming he sunk to his knees; the abstract made small and meaningless, the blind leading the blind; his rage; his impotence—and the screams, always the screams, of the dead and the innocent, of the terrified and the lost; there would be no justice for anybody ever again, only vengeance, only fear, only bright green eyes and a terrible, cruel laugh—

Anders woke with a gasp.

Sweat dribbled down his temples. It pooled under his arms and kneecaps, clung to his tunic and blanket. At his side, Garrett still snored softly, their long years together inuring him somewhat to the many tosses and turns of a restless sleeper.

Carver, however, was staring at him, mouth slightly agape.

He sat on a tree stump by Merrill’s bedroll, his sword drawn and ready, and even though he no longer wore the Chantry insignia, Anders couldn’t help but see Greagoir, who’d similarly greeted him from slumber that day in the Harrowing Chamber, so many years ago. 

Anders sighed raggedly. Taking care not to jostle Garrett, he pushed himself out of the bedroll. As soon as he stood, Dog snuggled in close to Garrett, reclaiming the ebbing warmth for his own. 

“Bad dreams?” Carver said softly as Anders sat by the fire.

“Yes.” He rubbed a crick in his neck and looked at the fire pit, at Garrett, at the scrub grass—anywhere that wasn’t Carver.

But Carver, never a man for civility, would not look away. “Darkspawn again?”

“In a way,” he sighed more than spoke. “I was back in the Wardens.”

“With _Amell_.” Something in the way his lip curled when Carver said her name made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“ _Warden-Commander_ Amell,” he corrected for no good reason. 

In her sleep, Merrill softly groaned and murmured a name. Carver whipped around, tilting his entire head like a curious puppy. Considering her for a moment, he gently reached out and pulled the blanket back over her shoulders. Merrill rolled over. In her sleep she mumbled something Dalish that made Carver smile sadly; with a brief flick of his fingers, he tucked one braid behind her ear. 

“She’s not your sister, you know,” Anders said.

Carver jerked his hand back and glared at him. 

“And he’s not my cousin,” Carver said, nostrils flaring. “What’s your point?”

For the first time in weeks, Anders felt Justice flutter in a small, dark corner of his mind.

“Something on your mind, tin can?” he said with more vitriol than he’d intended.

Carver snorted. “I’ve heard the stories. I know you and she were _close._ ” He turned his gaze away from Anders, to the shadows encircling their camp. “Done with one Amell, now you’re on to complete the set?”

“How long have you waited for that zinger?” Anders snarled. He suddenly tasted ozone, the once familiar flavor so sharp and coppery on his tongue he nearly winced. He’d almost forgotten this, the weight of it, the way it burned in his sinuses.  He only hoped he wasn’t glowing blue.

When Carver didn’t respond, his scowl deepened, and the taste faded.

“I suppose that makes you next, sweetums." Anders puckered his lips and blew a kiss. “You know how much I love shiny things.”

Carver merely huffed in reply. They sat in silence for a time, Anders watching the fire, Carver watching the shadows. He looked like his brother, Anders thought uncomfortably, except without the beard, because Carver had never had anything to hide. Not like the rest of them.

“It wasn’t ever like that between us.” Anders wasn’t quite sure why he said it, only that it needed to be said.

Carver shrugged, though his eyes stopped their restless scan. 

“She already had someone,” Anders continued. “A former Templar—another Warden, I believe. Alistair, Altair, something like that.”

He didn’t add, of course, that such details had never stopped Anders before; but he’d been a different man back then – he’d worn Chasind robes and an earring, and he’d challenged dwarves to drinking contests, and he never would have worried about what shouldn’t be said or what couldn’t be done. But the dream had shaken Anders; he still heard the baroness’s crisp, cold laugh ringing in his skull; and he didn’t care any longer whether he was troubled over Amell for Justice’s sake or for his own.  

“I bet you just love the romance of that, don’t you?” he continued with a sad smile. “The apostate and the Templar, running off into the sunset together, saving the world one Blight at a time.”

A line appeared between Carver’s brows. “At least I’m not trying to turn her into a martyr.”

“I’m not trying to turn Garrett into anything.” Anders hugged his elbows. “He's a big boy. He does what he wants.”

“Yes, and we suffer the consequences for it, as always.” He shifted on the stump, stretching his legs out long. “Just—“ He considered his next words carefully, weighing each sound. “Just take him for who he is. Not who you want him to be.”

Anders wanted to snap at him, to laugh callously or deflect with an insult -- to do something, anything; but Anders couldn’t find the strength within him, or perhaps the desire, to protest. “Good advice,” he said in a voice more gentle than vicious. “You might consider taking it sometime.”

“I—“ Carver’s cheeks suddenly sagged. He glanced wistfully at the sleeping elf, and it was then Anders noticed that Merrill had oriented her bedroll such that it faced his and Garrett’s. “I know what I am to her,” Carver said softly, “and what I am not.”

Anders felt a stab of shame, and maybe something else, and without another word, he walked back to his bedroll and nudged Dog out of his spot. He continued to stare wordlessly into the fire for some time, however, rolling the faint aftertaste of ozone around on his tongue until he fell asleep.


	4. Interlude: Just a Boy and a Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A collection of short Carver x Merrill drabbles, most set on the swampy road to Ansburg.

**I. Merrill: Inner Thoughts**

She touches herself sometimes, when she’s bathing, or after the rest of them have gone to sleep. It’s not a new habit, of course. Back in the old days, when they camped along the Wounded Coast, she used to do it frequently, especially when Hawke was on watch. She’d stare at his back, grit her teeth, and press against herself again and again until she saw stars.

Once, years ago, a beet-red Carver had called her for watch and refused to look at her—-even though he _always_ looked at her, even when she wished he wouldn’t. So she learned to be quieter; to lean her mouth against her pillow, and to turn her body in such a way that the blanket would conceal the fervent motions of her fingers underneath.

When she touches herself, she thinks of Hawke: Hawke force-blasting mercenaries and Carta thieves, bellowing commands across the battlefield, his fox-fur mantle fluttering in the breeze. She especially likes to picture his beard, the way it curls at the ends, how it might feel against her fingers and her neck. Elves can’t grow beards, and besides, they’d look funny with all that hair mucking up the line of the vallaslin. But Garrett doesn’t look funny. He looks strong. Proud. Noble. The kind of man who could take on a dragon and survive.

He did, actually. When she’s close, she pictures how the sunlight might’ve caught in his beard that day and turned it cinnamon-red, like fire against the sky.

Even now, with Anders ever-present, she still thinks of Hawke—-even though given the way he frowns at her, she swears he can tell. Occasionally, when she’s feeling really naughty, she imagines the two of them together, all sweat and groans and muscle, and what would go where and how, and it makes her come so hard she has to pretend she’s having a bad dream so she won’t attract any attention.

Since the Gallows, however, something has changed.

She still thinks of Hawke when she touches herself, Hawke and his fox-fur mantle and sun-cinnamon beard. But sometimes now he has blue eyes, and smells like leather and oil. He asks her questions about halla and Falon’Din, tells her stories, confides in her. He blushes. He sweats. Sometimes he doesn’t have a beard at all.

 **II. Carver: The Last Kiss Before Judgment Day**

Ser Moira was soft and smelled like fruit, and if Carver squeezed his eyes tightly enough, he could almost trick himself into believing she was Peaches, that the barracks was a sunlit hayloft, and that all of this was something more than it was.

Back then, he’d always thought Peaches was more interested in his brother, but when she’d learned he was headed to Ostagar, she’d knelt in the straw and sucked Carver’s cock noisily, eagerly, come dribbling down her chin, like this was what she’d wanted all along.

But Moira was no coy farm girl. When she parted her lips, she did so with purpose, and when she took a man into her mouth, he always knew where he stood.

In the Order he didn’t have to worry about competition or pity, or being someone’s consolation prize. Women either wanted him or they didn’t, and more often than not, they did—-especially Moira.

Peaches was gone now, taken by the darkspawn, dragged off to one of their caves, for Maker knows what. So as long as he was here, in the Gallows, alive, he might as well enjoy the girl who smelled like apples instead.

 **III. Merrill and The Griffon**

“Here.” Carver shoves something hard and lumpy into her hands.

Merrill regards it, one eyebrow quirked. It’s wooden, that much she can tell; mountain hemlock, maybe, or blue spruce. The bark has been stripped and the ends hewn. Little splinters stick out like hairs.

Does this mean something? Do humans exchange tree branches as presents? Hawke has never given her something like this before. But Dog has.

“Thanks!” She cranes her arm back to throw the chunk of wood as far as she can.

“No! Wait,” Carver shouts, grabbing her elbow, pulling it down against his chest. “What are you doing?”

“I thought you wanted me to throw it. Dog always brings me sticks when he wants to play fetch.” Carver’s ears turn bright pink, and he frowns, and that makes her frown too. “Oh no, it’s not for throwing, is it? Perhaps for burning?”

“It’s not a stick.” He takes her hand and turns it over, revealing the wood. His fingertips linger against her wrist. “It’s a _griffon_.”

She squints down at her hand. “I don’t see it.”

Carver points at two vaguely triangular lumps on the sides. “See, those are the wings. This is the body—“ He traces his forefinger along the potato-shaped mass, dragging it along squiggly lines she thought were ant tracks. “—and these are its feathers.”

He looks at her, hopeful.

“Oh, I get it now.” She smiles. “It’s _abstract_.”

“Blast it.” He sighs and releases her hand. “You know, if I drew this, it would look like a griffon. I was always better at drawing than carving.”

He moves to take it back, but she closes her fingers tightly around it before he can do so. His palm lands lightly atop hers, engulfing her small hand in his.

“No,” she says. His hand is heavy, warm. “I see it now. Really.”

His thumb twitches against her wrist. The feel of it tickles, and she wants to giggle, but when she does, it comes out as less of a laugh and more of a breathy sigh.

“You don’t have to lie to make me feel better.“ His smirk doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s just—-you told me about that thing Ilen made you, the one you lost getting here, and I just thought—“

He squeezes his eyes shut, eyelashes dark against his flushed cheeks.

“Carver,” she says softly. “Thank you. Nobody’s given me a present before.”

He opens his eyes, and they are blue, so _blue_ , as bright and intense as the summer sky.

“That’s not true.” Carver frowns. “My brother gave you that halla statue. The one you kept by your door.”

“Well, that was just something he found, like driftwood, or those torn trousers. Nobody’s ever _made_ me anything before.” She smiles warmly, her stomach tingling. “I like it.”

She’s surprised to find that she actually does.

She’s also surprised to find that his mouth is suddenly much closer than she’d expected, and she can’t seem to look away from it, transfixed as she is by the exact shape and color of his lips: thin, pink, slightly wet, the still-upturned corner a little chapped from the wind.

“Your name is funny,” she says, trying to look away but failing.

He’s so near now she hears him swallow. “How so?”

“Your mother should have named you Drawer instead.” He missed a spot shaving this morning, right under his chin. It’s all she can see now, little cinnamon-red hairs catching the setting sun. “Then you’d be good at carving things.”

He flicks his tongue across his bottom lip.

“You can get good enough at anything,” he says thickly, “with enough practice.”

Again his thumb strokes her wrist, lightly, accidentally, and where it touches tingles, like little licks of fire across her skin.

Her head falls forward.

Her lips part.

Her eyes drift shut.

From across the camp, Merrill hears a snort. “Maybe Mother should have named you Dragon,” Garrett calls out. “So you could do something useful and fly us all out of here.”  
Merrill blinks. Carver jerks backward, the moment lost, and she snatches her hands away from his grip.

“Thanks, _brother_ ,” he mutters, bright-red, fisting the hair at the back of his neck.

“Anytime, _Feathers_ ,” Garrett shouts.

Carver shoots her a sheepish smile and walks over to the fire, where Garrett and Anders still sit, snickering about something, probably dragons, because that’s another subject humans think is funny that she just doesn’t quite get.

As she watches Carver scowl and say something to his brother that she can’t hear, she doesn’t move, but instead she runs one shaking fingertip along the ant-tracks and thinks about warm hands and feathers and clear, summer skies.

 **IV. Carver: Where I Should Be**

“Do you miss the barracks, Carver?”

He notices that she’s playing with the wooden griffon he gave her, passing it back and forth between her fingers, wings right-side up, like it’s flying between her palms.

“Why do you ask?” he says, unable to take his eyes off the interplay of her nimble fingers.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Suddenly she catches the knotted lump between her hands, cupping them as if she’d caught a firefly in flight. “Aveline always used to talk about the barracks, and how there was no place else she’d rather be. I just wondered if you felt the same way.”

“I’m happy where I am right now.” She looks up at him, and her emerald eyes catch the setting sun, flashing, and his heart somersaults in his rib cage.

“Here?” She cocks her head at him. “In a swamp?”

He laughs. “Well, maybe not in a _swamp_. But yes, here.” He leans closer to her, casually, accidentally, brushes his shoulder against hers. “It could be worse.”

“Really?” She brushes back. _Maker_ , she brushes back. “How?”

Carver grins.

“I could be in the barracks.”

 **V. Merrill: Why I am Here**

They’re walking ahead of Anders and Garrett again-—they always seem to separate into pairs, like Dalish hunters—-and she’s telling him a story (the one about Falon’Din and Dirthamen, because he seems to like that one), when suddenly he closes his eyes, draws a breath, and holds up his hand.

She stops mid-sentence.

“I have to know.” He drops his hand, clenches it into a fist. “Why are you still here?”

She cocks her head at him. “How do you mean, Carver? Where else would I be?”

“I mean, I get why _he’s_ here,” he gestures vaguely behind him, “And why _I’m_ here. But why are you here?”

He won’t look at her. She wishes he would. Without eye contact, she starts feels awkward again—-as if she ever stopped feeling awkward, all left-footed and wrong, ever since the day she left the aravels—-but it’s different somehow, and she’s not really sure why. It’s just Carver. Not Hawke. There’s no need to feel awkward at all.

“Because he asked me to,” she replies.

“Because he asked you to,” he repeats. He still won’t look at her. “Simple as that.”

“Yes.” She frowns at the growing pit in her stomach. “Should it be something else?”

And it is as simple as that, really. Hawke is the only one who ever asked, who ever wanted her by his side, and for a long time that was the only thing she ever really trusted. Not that he needed her. No, he never needed her—not like he needs Anders, not like she’d wanted him to need her. But he simply desired her presence, and that had to mean something, something valuable and honest and worth protecting, because if nothing else it was hers and hers alone.

“You love him that much.” A muscle pulses in his jaw, just like Hawke’s does sometimes, except his is easier to see.

Now he turns and catches her gaze. Carver’s eyes are so bright and clear, like a lake where you can see right to the bottom.

“Yes,” she says softly.

Except she’s not sure anymore if it’s the same as it once was, or if it means the same thing it used to. And it scares her, it makes her want to hold on tighter, in case the last thing she knows to be true is taken from her too.

He sighs and nods, and suddenly looks very old.

“Finish your story,” he says.

 **VI. Merrill: Need**

After the fourth bog she’s almost stepped in, she’s had it.

“Elgar’nan, Carver.” She folds her arms across her chest and glares at him. His hair flops in front of his eyes, and he just looks so _concerned_ , and suddenly she doesn’t know whether she’s more upset that she keeps stepping in bogs, or that he’s the one who keeps pulling her out of them. Right now, she’s not sure it matters. “I really don’t need you to protect me.”

He flushes. “I know. I know,” he mutters, dropping his gaze. “Don’t you think I don’t know?”

“I wonder sometimes,” she says, pointedly glancing at the hand still on her elbow.

Immediately he drops his arm, and it hangs awkwardly in the air between them. “Look, I know you can take care of yourself. You all can.” Something about the way he says that cuts her, makes her stance falter just a bit. “I’m just trying to help.”

“You help like Dog helps,” she says.

He narrows his eyes, squares his shoulders, and glares at her.

“You know, just once,” he says quietly, tightly, as if his voice were twine threatening to snap, “I wish someone around here actually needed me to do something. Anything. Just once.”

 _I need you._

She almost says it.

Even before she realizes she’s thought it.

But even she knows those words wouldn’t help right now—-they’re too accidental, too raw. And maybe too true, now that she’s stopped to think about it; but she doesn’t want to think about it, not right now, not right here, not with his eyes fixed on her like that, turning her bones to jelly.

So instead she says, “I need you to shut up,” and stomps ahead, keeping her eyes cast down on the footpath between the bogs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Ser Moira is Emeric's protege/assistant. She's the one who lets you know about the secret meeting in Lowtown, and she'll go after Gascard DuPuis if you tell her to.


	5. Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now with Special Guest Star #1!
> 
> (PS: Sorry it took so long to get this up: AO3 is being pissy for me, so I had to handcode in all the parabreaks, emphases, etc.)

With a wet pop, Anders released Garrett’s cock from his mouth.

“Maker, Garrett,” he said, palming his aching jaw. “This isn’t the Grand Tourney. You can hurry it up a _little_.”

“Look, love,” Garrett growled, but without any real heat. He fisted Anders’s loose hair, tugging his gaze upward. “I’m not the one sucking cock here. Hurry it up yourself.”

“Hey, I’m trying.” Anders licked a long, wet stripe up the underside of Garrett’s shaft. Nothing. Not even a moan. Anders sighed. “But a man can only keep a cock down his throat for so long before his chin gets sore.”

Garrett ground his teeth, that little muscle in his jaw popping, and stared into the woods in the direction in which Carver and Merrill had departed. “Just keep going. They’ll be back soon.”

“Oh, baby, how I love when you talk dirty,” Anders muttered as he resumed his previous position, his knees squelching in the cold, damp mud.

Anders took Garrett back in his mouth, moving vigorously up and down the spit-slick length. From the back of his throat he moaned little encouraging noises that _normally_ made Garrett do the same, a call and answer just for the two of them; but this time, they elicited nothing, only more silence. Anders even let out a few sparks – risky, considering his already depleted lyrium reserves. But Maker, anything would be worth it if he could just make Garrett _come_ already.

He hadn’t been at it very much longer when Garrett finally sighed, putting his hands on Anders’s shoulders and pushing him gently away.

“Sorry, love,” he said, not looking down. “I just don’t think it’s going to happen right now.”

“Here, let me use my hands.” Anders waggled his fingers, shooting inviting little sparks up and down his fingers, mana drain be damned.

Garrett smiled sadly. “Sorry,” he repeated. “Maybe later.”

Anders stood up, swatting at the mud stains on his trousers. “You want to talk about it?”

“What do you mean?” Flushing, Garrett shoved himself roughly back into his smalls.

“What do I mean?” Anders folded his arms over his chest. “Love. Please. I might as well have been reading you the Chant. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing, alright?” He adjusted his breeches to hide his quickly diminishing erection. “It’s nothing.”

“Fine.” Anders bit his lower lip and frowned. “I think I hear the kids anyway.”

It was a lie, of course; Carver and Merrill wouldn’t be back for an hour or two yet, not with Dog’s tendency to roam and Carver’s terrible sense of direction. But you weren’t with a man for four years without learning to cater to his prideful parts, and Anders had long ago realized that lies of consideration could be as much a show of devotion as worshipping a cock.

Still, Garrett barely acknowledged that Anders had said anything at all, only grunted softly and continued picking nonexistent pine needles out of his trouser legs.  
Anders sighed. When he’d sent the others off chasing after elfroot, he’d had such high hopes: a few precious hours with Garrett, just the two of them, alone. Sex had always solved so much between them, or, if not, had at least made problems not seem so insurmountable. But with Carver and Merrill around, they didn’t get much time for anything other than quick fucks while bathing and discreet rubs under the blankets. He’d noticed the way Garrett had begun staring in the fire at night, even when it wasn’t his turn for watch, and Anders had only wanted to offer him a moment of peace, of worship and joy, just how like it used to be—-and yet, here he was, unable to even suck off the love of his life without feeling like a blighted Templar.

“Come on, let’s get back to camp,” Garrett muttered. “They’ll be here any minute.”

They’d just turned to abandon the little clearing when a scream tore through the air.

Anders’s stomach somersaulted. “Merrill?”

They shared a swift glance and, without a word, sprinted toward the scream.

They ran through clearing after clearing, boots squelching in the hungry muck. Branches from the low, fat trees slapped Anders’s face, tore at his cheeks and loose hair. His sides burned. His heart hammered against his ribcage. But they couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down, not now, not ever.

Finally, after several minutes, they finally heard the clang of steel on steel, and Dog’s staccato bark, and the arcane boom of Merrill’s spellcasting voice, as she commanded the wetland roots to her whim.

Suddenly, though, the sky began to whirl above Anders, and his skin crawled with a long-forgotten itch, as if the bones under his skin scrabbled to break free. Then came the drumming, the awful drumming, which by now he knew was only his own blood pounding in his ears; but it was still enough to evoke the sweet, fatty stench of rotted, ruined flesh; and the song, the great and terrible song—

“Garrett,” he gasped, staggering. “Darkspawn. Ahead.”

“ _Shit_.” Garrett’s hands sparked, and went up in flame.

Together they burst into a small clearing. There they were, Carver, Merrill and Dog, their backs pressed back against a line of twisted oak trees. Before them, an entire platoon of genlocks yipped and hooted, brandishing their weapons.

Carver’s sword flashed, and around the glade, roots swirled in a maelstrom of mud and thorns. But there were so many darkspawn, so very, very many—-and the genlocks knew it.

Garrett screamed in rage. The air sizzled, and with a quick thrust of his fists, he called down a firestorm on the platoon.

“Smooth, Garrett,” Anders muttered, although he was willing to admit a slight thrill watching the genlocks scatter, swatting at the flames that singed their rotting flesh.  
But the thrill vanished quickly when the creatures, one by one, whirled on Garrett and Anders.

For his part, Garrett hurled himself into the fray, hurling reckless fireballs that careened through the darkspawn like dragons. Anders kept close behind, casting protective wards where he could. From across the clearing, he heard Carver bellow: a murderous, terrifying sound, full of fury and nightmares; and then Merrill started shouting equally chilling in elvhan, and what Anders wouldn’t give to have Aveline here right now, soaking up blows like a Tevinter war-elephant.

Two genlocks pitched toward him, scimitars raised. With a flick of his arm, Anders conjured an ice shield around them, which luckily scattered and froze a few others in place. But then three more genlocks advanced, cornering him against Garrett’s back. They reached for him, wickedly curved swords gleaming, but at the last moment Anders hurled them all backward with a well-placed mind blast.

Behind him, Garrett unleashed a Fist of the Maker on a pair of genlocks menacing Carver, then opened a gravity well near Anders. “This--would be—-so much easier,” he gritted between spells, sweat pouring down his arms, “if we hadn’t—-sold-—the blighted staves.”

Then a genlock grabbed Garrett’s fur mantle and tackled him to the ground. Another tried to kick Garrett in the head, but Anders hurled himself at it, hands outstretched, and electrocuted him. As he let go the charred corpse, Anders saw out of the corner of his eye Garrett grappling with the creature, eyes wild, kicking and grunting, until finally he rolled on top of it. He landed a solid punch to its jaw. Then another blow, with the sick squelch of blood and bone. Then another. And another.

Around them more genlocks advanced. “Bloody hell, Garrett,” Anders shouted. “Leave it. It’s dead.”

But he wouldn’t move, just kept punching and punching the genlock, the black blood spattering on his cheeks. In his hair.

On his lips.

Anders’s heart stopped.

Reckless. Always so reckless.

He grabbed Garrett by his mantle and hoisted him off the limp genlock. But by now at least fifteen more had come to circle them, grinning and yipping, like wolves around fat lambs.

The two men inched closer together, until finally they were back to back.

“I love you,” Garrett said, his voice thick, ragged. Exhausted.

“I love you too,” Anders replied evenly, trying not to feel disappointed that even here, even now, Justice remained silent within him; that he’d die without even one last taste of ozone on his tongue.

Suddenly, from the trees arose a great and terrible roar.

At least a dozen men and women emerged from the trees like conjured shades, hurling themselves into the startled genlocks. Swords flashed. Arrows whined. Here and there a genlock exploded in a shower of blood and entrails, the black slick coating the earth like a curse.

Dumbfounded, Anders could only watch as a nearby warrior, ululating, bashed his mace into a genlock skull. Blood sprayed onto his armor--his very _familiar_ armor.

The stars and blue. The uniform of the Wardens.

Anders couldn’t believe his luck. _Wardens_. Here. In the nameless Marches. He really did have nine lives, after all.

The genlocks scattered, terrified, all but forgetting their former prey, while the Wardens swarmed the clearing, making short work of the stragglers.

Anders allowed himself a moment of relief before whirling on Garrett. He scrabbled at the man’s blood-spattered cheeks, swiped frantically at the bits of darkspawn-muck dripping from his lips.

“Garrett—-no-—please--you didn’t swallow it, did you?” he babbled. “Did any of it get in your mouth?”

“ _Maker_ , Anders. Not now.” Garrett tried to swat him away, but Anders refused to let go.

“Garrett, did you?” His voice broke. “ _Did you?_ ”

Garrett’s cheeks sagged under Anders’s touch. He brought a hand to the back of Anders’s neck. “No, I didn’t,” he said, almost tenderly. “I’m not a mouth-breather like my brother.”

Anders wanted to kiss him--in fact wanted to do a thousand things besides just kissing--but that would have to wait until the tainted blood had been washed clean; and besides they were still on a battlefield, even one quickly depleting of its darkspawn. So instead he settled for resting his forehead against Garrett’s, just for a second.

When Anders broke away, the last genlock had already retreated, and the Wardens had begun to congregate around their leader, a stout dwarf in what appeared to be a salvaged Chasind battle helm. Axe in hand, the dwarf tugged another one free from a nearby genlock thigh.

“Well. Still alive,” the helmet chirped. “Funny how that keeps happening.”

Anders swayed against Garrett. Within him, something flared, something hot and blue and homesick.

That voice.

He knew that voice.

“Andraste’s knicker weasels,” he gasped. “S—Sigrun? Is that you?”

The Chasind helmet turned his way, the twin axes curving into ready positions.

“Nug-humpers,” the helmet muttered. “Now we gotta deal with griffers, too.”

“No-—no.” Anders wiped the blood off his cheeks, pulled the hair back from his face. He threw his arms open wide. “Sigrun. Siggie, it’s _me_. Anders.”

The axes dropped an inch, and the helmet went very still.

“Anders?”

“Yes, look, it’s me. Watch.” Smirking, he slipped his hands behind his head and flicked his hips at her, jutting them back and forth in small, precise movements. Garrett’s eyes boggled. “See? The spicy shimmy. Your favorite.”

Carver leaned over to Merrill. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Is this some sort of Warden secret handshake?”

She shrugged. “Maybe we’re missing something dirty.”

“Maybe we all are,” Garrett added.

“Anders?” The voice repeated. Off came the helmet, revealing a grinning, tattooed Duster, with bright, blue eyes and black hair tied in girlish pig tails. Her tattoos were more faded than the last time Anders saw her, and more wrinkles creased around her cheeks and eyes, but it was her, definitely her, Sigrun, his sunshine in the deep.

Sigrun holstered her axes and hurled herself at Anders, arms snaking around his hips. The force of her embrace knocked him back a few steps. “Oh, _Anders_ ,” she cried. “Sweet dusty nug-snugglers, I thought you were dead.”

He grinned. Suddenly exhaustion weighed on him, not just the exhaustion of battle, but of years.

“Nope. Nine lives, remember?” As he pulled her tight, his mouth filled with the taste of ozone, comforting and familiar.

“You must be on number seven or eight by now.” She pulled back and punched him on the arm. “Oh, Pounce is going to _shit_ himself.”

“Pounce?” Anders grabbed her arms, squeezing her tightly. “He’s still _alive_?”

“Never been better.” Her grin faltered as she pushed back from him. “Bronto’s balls, Anders, you look like the underside of a boot. What happened to you? Where’s Justice?”

“Well,” Carver muttered. “The Maker has a sense of humor indeed.”

“Er—“ Anders shot Carver a silencing look. “I—You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” Sigrun shook her head, pigtails slapping her cheeks. “I’ve been in Ansburg for six years. Nobody tells me anything.”

“The Warden-Commander didn’t mention me—-us, what happened?”

“Nope,” Sigrun said. “Said you and and Justice and what’s his name—“

“Rolan,” Anders muttered in a tone that made Garrett inhale sharply.

“Yes, she said you all had to run off to the Marches for some super-secret mission of great importance.” Her grin widened. “I assumed it involved pretty girls. Looks like I wasn’t wrong.” She winked, eyes darting toward Merrill.

Both Garrett and Carver scowled in unison.

“Rolan—-behaved himself, didn’t he?” When Anders shook his head, Sigrun’s eyebrows knitted together. “I always had a bad feeling about him. I never figured why she sent him with you.”

“She didn’t.” Anders drew a ragged hand over his face. “Siggie, you’ve really heard nothing? About Kirkwall, about Justice, about Hawke—“

“Hawke?” At the name, Sigrun blanched and drew back. Eyes wide, she glanced first to Garrett, then to Carver, then back to Garrett again. She took in his blood-stained fox fur, the still ash-stained jerkin, the empty lyrium potion case slung around his hip. With a lightning-quick hand, she tugged Anders back toward her, away from Garrett’s side. “Are you crazy? What are you doing with _him_?”

Anders and Garrett exchanged a confused glance. “Hawke? The Champion of Kirkwall?”

“I know who he is, you nug-snuggler.” She drew her axes again, angling herself between him and Garrett. “He’s a nutcase. A murderer. Blew up an orphanage, slaughtered hundreds of innocents. Stop,” she commanded, hefting an axe in Garrett’s direction. “Don’t move. Stay where you are.”

“Your ex-girlfriend is lovely, Anders,” Garrett said, sighing dramatically and folding his arms across his chest. “You should invite her over for tea sometime.”

Sigrun’s eyes narrowed. She dragged her gaze back to Anders, looking at his greying Simir feathers, the fine stitching on his coat and boots, the mud stains on his knees.

“Oh, Anders,” she whispered, her disappointment palpable. “I always knew your taste stunk, but this—“

“No, wait, Siggie, you’ve got it wrong,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Very wrong.”

She shrugged off his hand.

“Tie his hands,” she said to a nearby Warden, nodding at Garrett. “We can’t take any chances.”

“But it wasn’t him,” he said, fighting back panic as he watched Garrett silently hold out his hands for the rope.

“Oh, really,” she said, sparing Anders a sidelong glance. “Then who? You?”

He sighed.

“Bronto’s hairy ball sack,” she said, swallowing.

“It wasn’t an orphanage,” he said quietly. “It was a Chantry. Well, they had an orphanage there, I suppose, but I never saw them use it.” His gaze dropped, and the ozone in his mouth began to taste like blood and ash, and a powerful wave of guilt flooded him. _Children_ , he heard from the corner of his mind. _Children._ "Please, Sigrun. Don't do it."

Sigrun eyed him for a moment. “Tie them both up,” she said at last. “And these other ones too.”

The ululating warrior took Anders’s wrists and looped a coil of rough rope around them. Anders swallowed thickly.

“Sorry, Anders,” Sigrun said, staring at his bound hands. They trembled violently. “At least it’s rope and not chains, right?”

“It’s okay,” he lied. “You can’t take chances.”

“Glad you understand.” She whistled long and low under her breath. “Shit, if that man killed Justice—“

“Justice is safe.” Anders smiled wanly at her. “Safer than the rest of us, I imagine.”

She scowled.

“Right. Well, come along then,” she said. Sigrun turned to leave the clearing, the rest of the Wardens turning with her. She refused to meet Anders’s eyes, even as she took the end of his rope binding from the Warden who’d tied him.

“Where are you taking us?” Merrill piped up.

“Somewhere safer than a genlock training camp,” Sigrun snapped. “Now shut it.”

“Hey, Siggie.” Anders swallowed the panic rising in his throat, and nudged the dwarf in shoulder with his elbow. She ignored him. “Siggie.”

“Sigrun,” she said. “That’s Warden-Captain Sigrun, if you’re nasty.”

“Siggie,” he repeated. She rolled her eyes. “Before, when you called me a ’griffer’. What’s that?”

“Huh? Oh.” The corner of her mouth tugged upward, and a wicked gleam sparkled in her eyes. “Griffer. You know. A griffon chaser.”

“Maker, Sigrun, I missed you,” he sighed.

“I don’t get it,” said Merrill, a few paces behind. “What’s a griffon chaser? Aren’t all the griffons extinct? How can you chase them?”

“It means a person who follows around Wardens,” Anders said, silently blessing Merrill for the distraction. He craned his head back to where she and Carver walked side by side.

“Oh.” She nodded at him. “Like a dog.”

“Er, not exactly.” Carver blushed. “I’ll explain later.”

Sigrun snorted. “Where’d you pick this one up, Anders?”

“Ancient elven burial ground,” he said. “Funny story actually. Lots of angry spirits. Even a dragon. Well, sort of.”

“I’ll bet.” She stifled a smile and stomped ahead. “And plenty of cute elven girls, too, I bet.”

“You know Anders so well,” Garrett said with a sad smile.


	6. Not Giving Up, But Giving In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone learns a valuable lesson about taking Anders captive.

Anders was a fool. A blighted, spineless, shit for brains fool.

Why, _why_ had he let Sigrun bind his hands? He hadn’t thought it through, of course; he never did when it was just him up in there, left to make all the decisions. He’d simply panicked when he saw Garrett stretch out his own wrists, offering them up like a sacrifice to the rough hempen coils. _Not him. Me. Anyone but him_ , Anders had thought. But in the end, offering himself hadn’t done much good. It hadn’t stopped Sigrun from tying Garrett’s hands together, and now everyone’s hands were bound; and it was all his fault.

Nevermind that the one at the end of his rope was SIgrun, Siggie, the only mortal Warden who’d ever understood him, who’d never looked at him with fear in her eyes. Nevermind that he would never hurt her—that Justice would never—but no, she’d tied his hands anyway—

“It’ll be okay,” he whispered over and over again, but he couldn’t quite make himself believe it.

Instead he could only focus on the scratch of hemp against his flesh; the way it cut into his skin, abraded away the tough parts, leaving only the raw, tender meat below.  
He should have known. He should have remembered what Amell had taught him: that even friends could be jailors, that even the ones you love will bind your hands in the end.

“It’s easier for them, Anders,” she’d said. “Because we let them.”

A pace or two ahead, Garrett stumbled. They hadn’t let Anders heal him. Hadn’t let Anders even touch him. The flesh around Garrett’s eyes and jaw was starting to swell and turn purple. The smeared black stain across his cheeks looked like a map of Kinloch Hold. He wheezed a little; his nose must be broken. If only they’d let Anders heal him. If he could only reach out…

But then his Warden captor walked between them, obscuring Garrett from view.

“It’ll be okay,” he whispered, but it wasn’t, because suddenly Anders could no longer see the stars and blue, but only the sunshield and the flaming sword. Every armor clank was a Templar boot; every murmur and cough the cheap, harsh laugh of men much older than he, with bristly mustaches and sad eyes, come to take him away. Now it was no longer the cries of darkspawn his captors were immune to but his own cries, the cries of children taken from their rat-spit villages, screaming for their mothers, screaming _let me go_.

Every step forward took him back, back through the years until now he was twelve again, hiding among the alpaca herd, hoping their hums would conceal his whimpers. But even the herd couldn’t hide him, not the day the Templars came. Even the herdsire, kicking and biting, couldn’t scare off the man in metal, because then he just Smote the herd, twenty lifeless bodies crumpling to the ground, just to get at the one boy sobbing in the middle of it all, grabbing him by the hair as he pounded bare fists on metal and screamed _you killed them you killed them all you bastard._

From far away, he could hear his father saying his name—not _Anders_ , not the alias he’d adopted, but his real name, his secret name. His father’s name.

But the voice wasn’t his father’s. It was lower, gentler. Hawke. Garrett. Bringing him back to the present. Here, with the Wardens, and the ropes around his wrists.

“Garrett,” he managed, his voice strangled. “I can’t—I thought I could, but—I can’t.”

“Just hold on,” his love said, head craned backward, eyes wide, breath short. “Don’t--It’ll be okay.”

“Shut your mouth,” said the Warden next to Garrett, elbowing him in the ribs.

“Shut yours,” Sigrun commanded from Anders’s side.

She glanced at him then, her brows knit together in worry, and Anders wanted to tell her everything. But then Garrett jerked forward, tugged to face front by the Warden holding his rope— _not a rope but a leash; not hemp but steel; another mage bound, broken, chained. But no, but we broke the chains, he and I; we smashed the city of chains to the ground. And he said let me fight you have to let me fight but he never begged to be locked up; he never would have offered if he’d known this was the way it would always end, not in death or glory but in captivity, back in chains, always in chains, forever in chains, no matter how hard we struggle, always, always in chains; always a sword dangled above our heads; our entire lives the Harrowings we can never escape; and why don't they just drown us at birth; and this isn't giving up this is giving in; and Maker this will not stand—this injustice—this cannot stand—you will never, you will never, you will never take another mage as you took me--_

“Anders?” Sigrun’s voice sounded far away. She wasn’t here. But neither was he. Only ozone here. Only ash and blood and dust. The taste of the sky after rainstorms. The rock and sway of the open ocean. The song of lyrium calling him home.

“Oh shit.” _Garrett? When did Garrett get here? He had to leave. He had to escape. They would kill him if he stayed._ “Anders! Let me go. Please, you have to let me go.” _No, they wouldn’t kill him, they’d make him Tranquil. They’d strip away everything that made him beautiful and broken, leaving only the shell behind. He saw it now, he could see nothing else: Garrett’s dead, doe eyes, the brand on his forehead; except now it was Karl’s face; and now it was Owain’s; and now it was Garrett’s again, with the faded red scar in the shape of a sunburst—_ “Anders! Let me go now, you bastard—you don’t understand. Anders, love, fight it! Fight it!”

 _Let me go. Please, you have to let me go._

 _Let me go, ser. Please, you have to let me go._

Let me go.

 _you killed them all you killed them you bastard_

 **Let him go.**

And suddenly within him erupted the force of a thousand hurricanes; and all the terror of the open sea; and Anders became at once larger and smaller than himself; broke into a million pieces; and everything turned to blue.

He couldn’t move. His body moved, but he could not. His body was screaming, roaring, summoning flame. His body burned away the ropes around its wrists, and the wrists of its companions. His body hurled away the Templar that advanced on him; and then another one; crushed a Templar’s hand, then a kneecap. His body raged with a voice that was not his own, and ozone everywhere the taste of the ozone of clear skies and open seas and freedom—

But then Garrett’s hands were on his body, holding together the cracks. Garrett’s hands grabbed his and pulled him down, down. His body was a meteor crashing to the ground, and Garrett was the earth, welcoming him home, singing his name, over and over again, his real name, his secret name; begging him _please_ and _love_ and _fight_ and he felt himself falling, coming back, making sense again—

A burst of white light flooded his vision.

The hurricane sighed, and fell silent.

Hands on knees, Anders gasped for breath. His mouth gaped open and closed like a fish. Garrett was at his side, his hand on his back, warm and heavy, anchoring.

After a long moment, Anders finally looked up.

The patrol of Wardens surrounded him. Two Wardens lay unconscious nearby, while another babbled wordlessly, clutching his hand and twisted leg. Blades pointed at him from every angle, a tide held back only by Sigrun’s outstretched arm.

Before him, Carver stood, glaring, his hand lingering against his temple. The fingers shook a little.

“Thanks, I guess,” Anders said.

Carver stared at him impassively. Then without a word, he walked back to Merrill, who refused to meet his gaze. “There’s no need to bind anyone’s hands, Warden-Captain,” he said coldly. “We’ll come along willingly. We all will.”

“What the hell was that?” Sigrun whispered. Slowly, carefully, she lowered her arm and met Anders’s gaze.

Her eyes were wide, blue. Terrified.

Anders sighed. “Justice says hello.”

***  
The Wardens had pitched their camp in a nearby ghost town. It was a small constellation of rundown shacks that had been, at one point, a small millworks, though judging by the pervasive stink of woodrot and darkspawn, nobody had lived there for quite some time.

In the short trek there, Sigrun had not spoken to Anders or the rest of them, nor had she lowered her weapons. Anders thought he’d caught her looking at him once, but she’d actually only been fidgeting with an old, ornamental dagger, which she’d tied to her belt with a frayed cord of rope.

Once they’d arrived at the camp, she’d pointed them at the largest shack and said to Carver, “You will stay there, until the Warden-Colonel gets here.”

“Thank you,” he’d replied, saluting her.

She’d spat on the ground then, close to his boots, and left without another word.

Once she was gone, six Wardens--large, burly men that stunk of lyrium--had come to stand menacingly by the shack’s entrance. “It’s like being back in Kinloch,” Anders had said to nobody in particular. No one had responded.

That had been hours ago. Night had since fallen, moonlight peeking through the shack’s sole grimy, cobwebbed window. Merrill dozed, Dog curled at her feet, her hand in Carver’s, while his head bobbed gently toward her shoulder.

But Garrett was wide awake. He sat facing the door, his back against the dingy wall, with Anders’s head laid across his lap, like they sometimes used to do back in the estate, after a long day at the clinic or at the Viscount’s Keep. Now as back then, Garrett’s fingers slowly stroked the hair back from Anders’s face, and they lingered on the curve of his ear and the soft spot where his jaw connected to his neck.

“I thought you were past this,” Garrett said eventually.

“I thought we were too.” Anders stared unblinkingly at Carver’s unoccupied hand, squinting to make out his fingers in the dim light. “After the Gallows, I thought – but I guess we’ll never really be past it, he and I. It will always be a struggle to keep him contained.”

Garrett sighed, his breath stirring Anders’s bangs. “That’s the way life is. You stop fighting, you give up.”

“This wasn’t giving up. This was giving in.” Anders felt cold, his hands like ice. He sucked in a shuddering breath. “I should have known better. I should have stopped it. But I saw them take you. I saw them make you Tranquil.”

“Of course,” Garrett muttered. “You wouldn’t be afraid for yourself. Not you.”

“I will always be afraid for you, Garrett.” Anders squeezed his eyes shut. “And that fear will always hold me—hold us back. It can always be used against us.”

“Anders.”

“My fear will get you killed one of these days, love. I can’t bear that.”

Garrett’s fingers paused their soft caress. “Don’t you dare start with that ‘you should have a normal life’ business again. You and I, at least, we are past that.”

Anders chuckled with warmth, if not mirth. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good.” His fingertips resumed their journey across Anders’s cheek. “Besides, you’re stuck with me now. Everyone thinks _I_ blew up _your_ Chantry. Now nobody in Hightown will let me into their parties.”

Something clutching Anders’s heart, a great pressure he hadn’t even realized was there, suddenly relaxed its grip, and let go.

“About time,” he said softly, his voice catching. “I’d been trying to get you kicked out of those for months. Thought that last manifesto would’ve done it for sure.”

“Maybe if I’d left all the typos in.”

Anders laughed again. “You’d think shacking up with a sewer rat who couldn’t spell would’ve slowed down your flood of invitations.”

Garrett shrugged. “Guess it just made me seem more dangerous.”

“Unhinged is more like it.”

Garrett rested his head against the wall, and Anders sighed, his eyes stinging. It had always been easy like this between them, so effortless and natural; always a kind touch, a ready smile, just the right joke to erode and dull the pain. And if they could tease each other here, now at the end of all things—maybe, just maybe, Anders hoped, it could be that easy again.

“I heard you,” said Anders abruptly. Garrett’s breath hitched, his thumb jerked erratically before resuming its careful touch. “Back then. I heard you calling me, telling me to fight it. I heard you say my name.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I’ve always heard you. With Ella, with Karl. Now.” Anders exhaled sharply, his breath puffing before him, a black-blue cloud in the darkness. “You bring me back, make me remember. When he takes over, you’re the only one I can ever hear.”

“Then,” his thumb traced across Anders’s lips, “I’ll just have to keep talking.”

They stayed that way for a long while, taking what comfort they could from each other’s silence. After a time, however, Garrett shifted, and with the hand not occupied by Anders’s cheek, he pulled something shiny and metallic from his pocket.

It was a small ring, simple, unremarkable. It looked much like the trinket Garrett had been playing with so many weeks ago, that first night on _The Siren’s Regret._

“See this?” He twirled it between his fingers. “It was my father’s. From the Crimson Oars. Look.” He turned the ring on its side, and Anders could see a tiny engraved oar on the outer rim. “He gave it to Mother when they left Kirkwall.”

“Your mother had big fingers,” Anders said.

“She never resized it. She just wore it around her thumb.” Anders touched his fingers to the back of Garrett’s hand, which then closed around the ring. “When we got the estate back, she gave it to me to--” He sighed. “I guess the why doesn’t matter anymore.”

Anders slid his palm over Garrett’s.

“I miss your mother,” he said softly.

“I miss her too.”

They sat quietly for a few moments, Garrett’s pulse echoing in Anders’s ears.

“Take it.”

He sat up, gazed into cinnamon-flecked eyes. “I can’t, Garrett. It was your father’s.”

“Take it.” Garrett took one of Anders’s hands and placed the ring into his palm, closing the fingers around the cool metal. “And if next time I’m not there to call you back to earth, then maybe this will.”

He looked down at their joined hands, then back up to Anders, his eyes bright, shimmering, beautiful. “Love—I get it. I know why you hear me. It’s the same reason I hear you.” He drew a slow, deliberate breath. “You aren’t the only one who loses himself sometimes, who needs to be called back. And I hear your voice, always. Telling me to fight. To never give in.”

A hot tear rolled down Anders’s cheek, and he didn’t bother to wipe it away.

“I could say I love you,” he whispered. “But that wouldn’t really do it justice.”

“Then just take this instead,” Garrett squeezed the hand that still held Anders’s closed fist, and the ring within, “and it will say everything that ever needed saying between us.”

Anders blinked away the heat in his eyes. He nodded clumsily and, with shaking hands, slipped the ring onto his finger.

“It’s too big for me,” he said, his voice wavering. “Your father must have been part kossith.”

Garrett let loose a wet chuckle that sounded more like a bark. “I wonder if the Arishok and I were cousins. Talk about an awkward family picnic.”

He took Anders’s hand in both of his, kissed it, and slipped the ring onto Anders’s thumb.


End file.
